Turn the armory into a day shelter for the homeless

Try to imagine it: You're kicked out of your house for the day, stripped of car, cash, credit cards, job, friends and family.

Where would you spend those 12 endless hours?

Like any other homeless person — like any stray dog — you'd probably spend it foraging for food and shelter.

And it would be a taste — a small taste — of the daily grind facing hundreds of homeless men, women and children on the Peninsula every day.

You'd begin to understand what 61-year-old Phil Farace, chronically homeless and the so-called "mayor of Hampton," told the Daily Press a few months ago: "It ain't easy being like this."

A local homeless advocate is trying to make it a bit easier for people like Farace by turning an abandoned National Guard armory building in Hampton into a winter day shelter.

The Rev. Jim Rudisill vows to sit vigil at the armory till his idea gets a fair hearing.

I hope he has a comfy sleeping bag and loads of trail mix.

Because it seems Hampton officials are loath to turn over the building because 1) it's in such bad shape and 2) conventional wisdom is that scarce resources are better spent on prevention and permanent solutions, not temporary stop-gaps like shelters.

Of course they're right.

Permanent solutions beat Band-Aids any old day. But what do you do in the meantime with people like Farace?

Or like Jerome Kidd — former Hampton middle-class insurance agent, now homeless statistic — also featured in October in our five-part series on homelessness.

"I think people are really afraid of what it looks like now," Kidd said then of the new face of homelessness.

Or Greg Foster, who lost his construction job, then his home. "You could be here," he warned.

James Robinson of Newport News, homeless on and off for a decade: "It's terrible being a have-not."

And Nikki Young, homeless for a year: "People don't know how hard it is to come off of rock bottom."

Peninsula officials are throwing a task force, long-term plans, scarce resources and good intentions at the crisis, but still we have Farace, Kidd, Foster, Robinson, Young and about 565 others like them on any given day living between addresses in Newport News, Hampton, Poquoson, Williamsburg, James City and York counties.

Two shelters closed in recent years, leaving a sparse few that aren't year-round and/or have restrictions on clients.

By all means, let's invest in affordable housing, GED instruction, job training, bus passes or consolidating services. But until enough housing units exist and the agency network is up and running, a day shelter sounds like a darned good idea to me.

One police official in Hampton took issue with Rudisill's claim that the homeless population is at risk in the winter elements, insisting none have died there as a result of the weather in recent years. Perhaps.

But in the past year or so I've posthumously profiled two homeless men — one in Newport News, the other in Williamsburg/James City County — who died in the cold, abandoned buildings they tried to shelter in. And a friend of the Williamsburg man had months before been murdered by a guy who thought he was doing him a favor.

We don't know how many people have their lives shortened — by years or decades — by the harsh rigors of homelessness. By galloping addictions to alcohol or drugs, amplified by despair. By illness untreated.

To get back up from rock bottom, the homeless need something better than makeshift camps under overpasses or in cemeteries or patches of woods. Better than overnight floor mats and meals provided every winter by churches and synagogues.

And for right now — for right now — they need something better than hanging out at parks, libraries or community centers during the day, dodging citations for trespassing, loitering or panhandling, targets for criminals or, perhaps, sinking into the life themselves for want of options.